Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
Wednesdays: food hall Diecast, out near Piccadilly train station, offers a 40% discount on their delectable range of pizzas. I’ve had at least one a few months ago. The Diecast meetup I ran last summer with Manchester Nightlife was probably the most attended meetup I’ve ever organised. I’ve been meaning to run it again. But their midweek deal looks so good that I’m first going to gather a group for food this Wednesday night, if poss. Here’s the meetup for that.
This ridiculous Excess Month project comes to a close the next day as we tick over into May. Last push now.
Saturday: I’m going to give someone else’s meetup a shot. Making Friends in Manchester is hosting Drinks and Pizza in Yes bar near Circle Square. I’ve had their pizza. It’s good. 3 of us at the time of writing.
It’s a Bank Holiday, so the Sunday is open too: Joshua Brooks’Daytime Disco returns, this time with another headlining DJ. Remember the Horny song from 1999? Of course you do. Producer Mousse T takes over the decks for an afternoon of disco house. Manchester Nightlife will be there. Get involved! Tickets are £14 now but will go up.
Once again, For the Love of Horror was an astounding local movie event with some superb guests offering photo ops, autographs, stage discussions and there was even a Blade-style blood rave (that I missed). Find part 1 and part 2 of my writeups.
I got a follow back on Instagram from Finn Carter, Rhonda off Tremors.
Jeff Daniel Phillips, Herman Munster in the Munsters remake, liked my picture of him.
Unfortunately, after paying for a picture with Mekhi Pfifer, he then turned out to be Zionist. Well. Terrifier’s Jenna Kanell liked my pic of her.
Rewatched City of God, the Brazilian gangster movie. Excellent crime drama set in the Rio favelas, taking inspiration from real life, Goodfellas and I expect Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels.
Rewatched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an outrageous drug-fuelled trip through a police convention, a motorbike race and a desert. So many cameos that I didn’t recognise until this week.
Rewatched Lost Highway, David Lynch’s weird tale of a sax player sentenced over the murder of his wife (an act of which he has no recollection) only for him to disappear in jail and be replaced by another guy who has no recollection of how he got there. So good, but such a headfuck. Not seen it in maybe 20 years. Patricia Arquette, man. Good lord.
Polished off a citrus single malt 5cl bottle from the Chivas Regal blending kit I got Christmas before last. I’ve actually got 2 kits and am tapping through the content. I should try making a blend for the hip flask.
Excess Month ends on Thursday. I’ve read one of the books that I’d pulled out that fit this theme; review to be uploaded at some point.
Lastly, today is Alien Day: 26th April. 4/26. As in LV-426, the planet they land on in Alien.
‘Everything is judged by appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colourful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.’
So says Robert Greene in his book The 48 Laws of Power. Law 6 is Court Attention at All Costs. Well, let me prove this one to you.
I was an essential worker during the pandemic. I was working in a team who supported people with Parkinson’s, Dementia and Alzheimer’s, most patients being around 50-75 years old. When COVID hit, and lockdown was delayed because of our idiot then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, our clients were massacred. Every day people were phoning in about these desperately ill relatives. Usually, we’d see the warning at the top of the patient’s file: COVID-19 POSITIVE in bright red letters. People screamed and shouted, they’d cry, they’d demand to be put through to professionals, but we couldn’t. All we could do was email. The professionals’ job was to go through their inbox, grade the calls in levels of seriousness, and call back the most serious cases to offer support. Frequently, the relatives would miss these calls, and the dance would start again. People would go ballistic that they couldn’t just speak to the actual professionals. They’d scream, cry, demand... but rules are rules.
Eventually, in the start of 2021, Pfizer announced a vaccine. It was fully tested, fully approved, and safe. The government rolled it out and the COVID rates immediately plummeted. It was working. The country, and the world, was recovering.
Pretty much straight away, though, one person after another began to espouse their batshit anti-vaxx perspectives. Friends. Some colleagues. Celebrities. Love Islanders. Olympians. A whole load of UFC fighters.
Here’s the thing about having memory difficulties: you have to store a lot of written information to get by. Shopping lists. How to do your job. How to use the oven. How to program a VCR (historical example there). Solid note-taking is an absolute necessity. You genuinely can’t operate without it.
But then, once you start keeping notes, it becomes habitual, and it can almost take over your life. Any little titbit or instruction you learn, you’ll think, what if I need this later? Where should I store what I’m writing?
When smartphones came around (I got my first in 2010) I found the notes apps to be a game changer. Anything written could be stored, and tapping it into your keyboard would look totally normal as you’re handling your phone, like anyone else. You aren’t busting out a notebook and pen like George McFly in Back to the Future. You start by making notes like shopping lists, or instructions for using an appliance, or gym records. You write your tasks for the day, and tick them off as they’re done. You use your notes app on nights out, knowing that what you add might flesh out a blog post.
By this point you’re hooked on information.
There are other types of information: things you’d rather be aware of in future. This is usually about people. You find yourself categorising the information you find, creating lists: Tories. Anti-vaxxers. Zionists. Trump supporters. The categories grow, and the lists themselves grow as people share more face to face and – more brazenly – online.
There are more reasons for people to fall out these days, and people have fewer qualms about doing so. It doesn’t half get confusing, though, and it helps now to be able to check whether you’ve categorised a person as any of the above. Just use the search bar, tap in their name, and any note they’re included in is listed.
I kept these lists. As the years have gone on, I’ve steadily lost my patience with people I’ve noticed sharing the above views. I’ve unfollowed and unfriended on social media hundreds of people.
But if any of these people act up, I’ll be the first to criticise them. On X, this can get a bit of traction and it can equate to blog page views.
Back in June last year, there was a UFC fighter who found himself in intensive care after a rather nasty bout of staphylococcus aureus, a bacterial infection caused by dirt entering wounds. It’s not normally that serious but in this one case, it floored the guy. I hadn’t realised it was as serious as it was, but the name rang a bell. I won’t give him the attention now.
Anyway, I checked my Omninotes app, and yes, back in 2021 he’d been spouting off a load of anti-vaxx content. Many other UFC fighters did too.
I reminded the people of Twitter about this… and I was immediately bombarded with death threats. UFC fans and MMA students usually have humongous chips on their shoulders, and hundreds quickly told me that I ‘wasn’t safe,’ and was a ‘limey piece of shit.’
It’s pretty nerve-wracking having hundreds of people baying for your blood and calling you a horrible writer, but the payoff is a huge spike in blog page views. The fighter in question is recovering as in fact training again. It all worked out in the end.
Back in February I tried this ‘Tweet for Chaos’ project that I devised, tweeting out the names of all the people in the aforementioned categories. I didn’t get the immediate backlash that I thought I would, but once this was over and we rolled into March, my page views started to climb. Are these connected? I don’t know.
I recent months, my page views have gone through the roof. One one day recently I got 26 thousand hits. I’ve now passed million page views overall and I got 212 thousand in the last month, more than in any other month that I’ve been blogging.
I must have done something right. Annoying a load of anti-vaxxers probably had something to do with it. Or, maybe it’s bot traffic. I dunno.
FC: Tremors bombed on release, then 35 years later it’s remembered. Michael carried the mantel for 6 more movies.
MG: (Lead actor Val) Kevin Bacon felt he was a failure. He walked away.
FC: He said he’d come back now if there’s another.
MG: There’s a script for ‘Tremors 8’ but it’s in legal limbo. I said to a producer, ‘we’d better do it quick, because we’re getting old.’ I didn’t intend for Burt to be a main character. But the writers fell in love with the character, and when that happens it’s great.
MG: Quite heavy! It was a terrifying scene for me because I knew if I got it wrong, they’d have to take an entire day to reset the wall.
AQ: What was it like seeing the creature for the first time?
FC: I was in a few scenes. It was massive. I got dragged. The director (Ron Underwood) was 5’ (1.5m) tall, and the sweetest man, saying, “it’s getting closer! It’s getting closer! IT’S REALLY SCARY NOW!”
AQ: Did you speak to seizmologists to prepare for the role?
MG: Americans are crazy as you know. We have a president to prove it. We had a survivalist store, and they gave us the basics on booby traps, making a retreat, which I’m a little paranoid about. I took a lot of firearms training. You have to convince the audience that I was an expert. I worked quite a long time with firearms instructors, loading, unloading, to make it look like expertise.
COMPARE: What was your journey into that character, from the audition?
FC: I was doing a play in LA, and my classmates were laughing at this potential movie. Then I got it. But I got time, got just proficient enough (in seismology) to fool you. If experts come in, they’d disagree.
MG: I never wanted anyone down the barrel of my gun. If I put it down, I had to assume someone had touched it. I’d check it. If I hear about mistakes with guns on set, I say, ‘someone screwed up.’ I’m not a gun fan. I love model trains. Burt never points his gun at other people: only the monsters. We don’t fight each other; we come together as a team to fight a common enemy.
FC: When I was running away from the monster in my underwear, there were men under the set moving the ground. Everything you see is being moved by a huge team. On set there were no egos, or conflict. It was the perfect storm. I don’t remember there being any problems.
MG: There were no bad apples on set. No A-holes. Everyone was nice. It was, ‘Let’s try this.’
FC: The only time was when the Director of Photography said, ‘you cannot make that shot! There is no sun!’ In the evenings we partied in the hot tub. When they’re blowing away, that was a great scene. You think, oh my god, these people are prepared. They have a chance. My favourite scene, though, was Kevin Bacon saying ‘let her have blonde hair, big green eyes,’ then I turn around. All my insecurities and lack of confidence gave me the power to carry through Tremors. I’d think, ‘another day of work.’
Horror movie convention For the Love of Horror has landed back in Manchester. It’s Saturday 18th April and I’m looking forward to meeting a Commando actor (someone from the movie, not someone who left their underwear at the hotel). I’m going to try and get a few more photos, and hear what people have to say about their film careers. But first… let’s take a look around Bowlers Exhibition Centre.
The first Q+A Panel: 78-year-old Ken Foree, Peter from Dawn of the Dead (1978), who tells us he has “talents like Ernest Hemingway.” He tells us of his days of acting and writing.
“Have you ever tried to get something published? If you haven’t, I’ll tell you: I was between acting jobs, coaching basketball, little kids. I like to see the lightbulb come on. One of the kids’ dads said ‘let’s write a low budget action film.’ He’s in New Jersey, I’m in California. I had execs come by, they saw it on a coffee table. They said, who wrote this? I said, I’m not the writer. They said, you’re the writer. They pestered me for a call for months. I said okay. What about my family? A month later, the response has been tremendous at this late time in my life. This was about 10 years ago. You know Taxi? There was a series I wrote, ‘Limo 8.’ It was mine, but the same story. I wrote a horror story, called ‘Shadows.’ That got the same response. My 2 leads were in World War II. They were sending the letters. I wanted you to feel sorry for a serial killer character. But, as you know, everyone has challenges in life. I had things going on with family members. I said to my agent, ‘I’ll call you when I’m ready. Don’t call me.’ After turning down 15-20 projects in 20 years, now I’m overwhelmed. I’ve got loads. I’m ‘back.’”
COMPARE: There’s a lot of diversity in your career. Drama, horror, comedy. In Rob Zombie’s Halloween, do you bring fun?
KF: Not always. Joe Grizzly (Foree’s character in Halloween) was the most fun. There were 2 young lads in here today who said, ‘That’s Kenan and Kel’s Mr Rothmore!’
The mic is handed out to the audience queue.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: In Dawn of the Dead, the zombies are slow. These days in films, they’re fast. What do you prefer?
KF: The one where I’m paid! Rob Zombie has great way with words. I don’t have a favourite character or speed. I like a piece of this, a style of directing there.
AQ: What was it like filming the fight scene with Tyler Mane? (In the ‘07 Halloween remake.)
KF: I met Rob Zombie, I said Yeah, I’ll do Devil’s Rejects. I had food with Tyler Mane. Everything was real. We tore up the wall, rebuilt the wall, beat the shit out of that too. Tyler is a very nice gent.
AQ: What was the most memorable moment on Dawn of the Dead?
KF: It was an adventure every time we put on the costumes. The entire film. There was something every night.
To round off, Foree gives us some insight into what to expect next.
KF: Max Brooks is Mel Brooks’ son. We were having lunch in the US with a music artist. We had lunch every couple of months. We’d have a great time talking. Max did World War Z. He asked, ‘did you write anything on zombies?’ I said, ‘yes, but it was too expensive.’ I sat there, I said, ‘pass me the paper.’ He said, ‘you have to have the zombie thing as a comic book.’ Max thanked me through that. You’ll know more as soon as we have a distributor.
Next to stage: Mekhi Pfifer, Future in Eminem vehicle 8 Mile, and Tyrell Martin in 90s horror I know What you Did Last Summer. He was also Dr Gregory Pratt in medical drama ER.
MP: ER was fast-paced, dealing with other doctors and patients. I try and stay as fit as possible so I can enjoy doing these projects. ER was first for me in TV. We really forged a family atmosphere. We had each other’s backs and had vacations together. We’d spend 14 hrs a day, then go to Lake Tahoe to get food. Everyone was wonderful.
MP: Filming in 90s, I was doing soundtracks when I got the offer to do the music with Brandy and Monica (The titular ‘boy’ in The Boy is Mine.) 30 years later it’s still embedded in people’s memory.
AQ: What was it like filming (Dr Who spin-off) Torchwood in Wales?
MP: It was cold as hell on the beach. It was supposed to be summer, so we had no coats on. It was the coldest I’d ever been. I had no idea John Barrowman was as talented as he is.
AQ: in 8 Mile, who was the biggest joker?
MP: We were all in our 20s. Most people it was our first big movie. Eminem was the biggest joker. He was shy when you first met him.
AQ: Who would you most want to fight on film?
MP: I always wanted to fight Freddy or Jason.
CMPR: Who would you avoid?
MP: Hellraiser’s Pinhead. How’s he walking around with pins in his head?!
AQ: How would you survive the zombie apocalypse?
MP: I’d need a stocked freezer, dried food, weapons, and it takes a little community with doctors and engineers.
MP: Eminem had 3 trailers: a movie trailer, a gym trailer for working out, and a music trailer. He said, ‘I want you to listen to this track.’ Nobody knew Lose Yourself was going to be as big as it was, but it shows we bonded. When it came to the rap battle, director Curtis Hanson, RIP, he was not of the hip hop scene at all; he was a beach bum. He rolled around in a jeep with the top down. He let us have carte blanche. We had a great time.
Mekhi Phifer
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Next to the stage: David Patrick Kelly, Sully the henchman in Commando representing the mercenaries who have taken Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter. He also played Luther in The Warriors, T-Bird in The Crow, Howie in K-Pax, Jerry in Twin Peaks and Charlie in John Wick.
COMPARE: Every good guy needs a villain. How did you bring intensity to bad guys?
DPK: There were a group of guys working for Nixon. They ended up on the run, but they were mercenaries. What drove them was money.
COMPARE: What was your journey into performance?
DPK: I was a busker, playing songs. The Beatles came, and played in my hometown (Detroit Michigan). They came after the Kennedy assassination, and they were so joyful, a good break.
COMPARE: What was your first break?
DPK: I was in the musical Hair, on Broadway. I played guitar because of The Beatles. I like to say I’m a precursor to psychedelic music.
COMPARE: Let’s talk The Warriors. These days it’s still such a cultural phenomenon. Were you aware when filming?
DPK: No. Do you have drive in movies?
COMPARE: No. It rains too much.
DPK: It became this cultural phenomenon to see people on screen. The issues were really important in The Warriors, which was my first film. (Director) Walter Hill calls everything ‘a western.’
A queue forms for the audience questions. I’m second in line.
AQ: What was David Lynch like to work with?
(Kelly worked with Lynch on Twin Peaks.)
DPK: David was magical; so revolutionary. The script was like a song. I got a feeling; I knew at the time. I was filming Wild at Heart. He gave me the script. It was something special. You don’t normally see a director leave the camera on a drawing. But you’ve got to remember, Lynch was a painter before he switched to film.
COMPARE: This guy’s come prepared. He’s got a notebook!
DPK: I was attached to a crane by my ankle, like in the cowboys and Indians movies. I was up there for 5 hours! It’s a real rush of blood to the head.
COMPARE: Let’s talk The Crow. My dad showed me movies. When you came on, he’d go, ‘bad guy.’
(Starring lead Brandon Lee was shot when a live was accidentally entered into a chamber of a gun on the set of The Crow in 1993.)
DPK: Brandon’s passing was a huge tragedy. He had a stunt double. We didn’t know if the film would finish. My brother was in London. I went to Stratford and found this copy of Paradise Lost in a bookstore. I managed to get it into the film. I also managed to get It Can’t Rain All the Time into the soundtrack.
AQ: What’s the key to longevity in Hollywood?
DPK: Just stay healthy. So many people are gone because of drugs. I’m not preaching, but you’ve got to stay fit. I love being here, but my passion is Broadway. You gotta keep breathing.
The last question comes from a guy celebrating his birthday, so Kelly encourages all to join in singing Happy Birthday to You. Then he gives us a performance of his own.
Upcoming blog posts: 3 Laws of Power posts, a recipe review, a book review and a pharma experiment writeup. Blog posts on For the Love of Horror. There’ll be a few. Also a piece on a Daytime Disco event.
Booked today off just to hammer through it all.
Still locked out of primary Facebook. Driving me up the wall.
Recently I passed the 2 million hit mark on this blog, after running it for nearly 18 years. Took me 14 years to get the first million, and a further 4 to get the second. Must be doing something right. Anyway, I figured I’d celebrate. I’ve put up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to do a few Northern Quarter bars, starting in Pen and Pencil. Come and join me!
Rewatched Mulholland Drive, a David Lynch movie. Woman staggers down a Hollywood street clutching a bag of money and no recollection of anything. Meets an aspiring actress; together they go to an audition and meet the director and… nothing makes sense from therein. Very weird. Not sure there’s much to understand. As much as I like it, I’m don’t know why it’s considered a classic.
Dear month. Car bills, mostly. Saw Akira in 4K on the big screen in Vue on Friday night. Amazing Japanese sci-fi, just wanted to see it large even though I’ve got the DVD. 15 bastard quid for a standard cinema seat. That’s more than I paid for the physical media in 2002.
For the Love of Horror convention yesterday. Blog posts to come. Had a celeb photo booked, got another on the day.
Went to Daytime Disco in Joshua Brooks, solo, as my sole Meetup attendee seemingly bought a ticket and backed out. Blog post on that to come also.
